New Troop and Leader with questions

I am so glad I found this board. Well, I didn't exactly find it myself. I was pointed in this direction from another board.

I am a new leader for a new Daisy Troop. I've found that I have a million questions and some I have been able to find answers via Google and others from our service unit, but it's nice to have a place where I can post and check back.

The question of the day today has to do with flag ceremonies. I haven't found anything in my resource guide about flag ceremonies or the need to have a flag at our meetings. The grandmother of one of my girls was a girl scout leader and she said we needed a flag. Upon Googling I have found information related to flag ceremonies, but nothing specific for Daisy troops or even how to have a flag ceremony. I'm not even sure what a flag ceremony is.

Comments (9)

My troops did a flag ceremony at the beginning of every meeting, just a quick thing. I had some basic flag ceremony instructions (I'll see if I can find something similar online). We got a small tabletop flagset from the council store, that had the GS flag and the US flag.

For the flag ceremony they essentially bring the flags in, put them in their holders and say the pledge of allegiance. Then we always said the GS promise and the GS law. I would do kapers - one would carry the US flag, one the GS flag, one would be the caller (reads out the instructions for the flag ceremony), one would lead us in the pledge of allegiance, one leads the promise, one the law. The kapers rotate each meeting.

Oh also, with Daisies, we still did this same ceremony but it was a little simpler then. A Leader was always the caller, so we didn't have issues with their reading abilities, and we didn't recite the law every time (because again it was a reading thing - we eventually had the law on a poster, until they were older and had it memorized.) But the flag ceremony was pretty basic and easy and we considered it a learning process with the little ones.

We did a flag ceremony on Veteran's Day. I taught them how to respect the flag (we worked on respecting authority that day) and I showed them how to unfold it, how to put it up on the flag pole, then how to take it down and re-fold the flag. While the flag was on the flag pole we said the Pledge of Alligence.

I don't think a flag ceremony is required, but it is a Girl Scout tradition. The service unit that my younger troop was in (this is the troop I led since they were kindergarteners) always had a different troop do the flag ceremony for the Leader meetings. So we felt it was important that they learn the flag ceremony, and eventually learn about flag etiquette, etc.

It's really pretty easy. After assigning the kapers and each flag being held by a girl, we had the rest line up, and - following the caller's instructions - they'd walk over and put the flags in the holders. Then we'd arrange them in an arc facing the flags and do the pledge of allegiance, and then the Promise. At first they're still learning the Promise, but that's ok.

And I think it's good to teach them the flag ceremony becuase they are common at GS events. A few months after the troop started we did a daisy investiture ceremony and did a flag ceremony at the beginning of that, but we had older Girl scouts do that. When they bridged to Brownies in first grade (that's when the change to Brownies was at that point), we did an investiture with the flag ceremony.

Idea: have the grandmother come speak to the group as part of the Celebrating 100! patch (before the end of the year). She sounds like a great resource.

^^ She is a great resource! I'm so happy to have her not only as a family member to one of the girls, but a volunteer as well! I told her I would be using her vast knowledge a lot! Not only does she have a lot of GS knowledge, but she has contacts for all kinds of stuff.

Our troop hasn't even had their first meeting yet. We meet on Monday for the first time as an official troop. I'm not sure what we can do or should do for Celebrating 100!. Any ideas?